The establishment of the Foundation
The town of Eisenach is steeped in history and is rich in cultural-historical traditions. The time-honoured Wartburg Castle with its UNESCO World Cultural Heritage status looks down on Eisenach from above, making the town well known far beyond Germany’s borders. It is the place where St. Elisabeth did her good works and Martin Luther translated the New Testament. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, and so were Georg Philipp Telemann, Richard Wagner, Fritz Reuter and Ernst Abbe, individuals who worked there and left many a trace in the cultural history of the town.
Eisenach is an industrial town too, however.
Cars have been built below the Wartburg Castle since 1898. They are to be found all over the world under the brand names DIXI, BMW, EMW, IFA, WARTBURG and OPEL and are visible proof of the automotive traditions of Eisenach. automobile welt eisenach is a car museum tasked with preserving these traditions and making them accessible to the public.
Besides the Wartburg, the Bach House and the Luther House, the City of Eisenach operates 4 other municipal museums, so the financial means required to preserve the complete legacy of the town have always been in short supply. Way back in the spring of 2006, the City Council resolved to focus on the future of the car museum. The result was a long-term policy decision to turn it into a foundation with the aim of attracting other donors to help cover the costs of maintaining it.
However, the establishment of a municipal foundation was very difficult and progress was slow. Matthias Doht, who was elected Lord Mayor of the town in the summer of 2006, felt very strongly about the history of car manufacturing in Eisenach. After all, he came from an old Eisenach car-manufacturing family himself, and the third generation of his family worked at the factory. Mr Doht himself is a qualified engineer. Until 1990, he worked as a design engineer for the Eisenach car factory.
This led to the decision by Lord Mayor Matthias Doht to push for the establishment of a private foundation under German civil law. On 3 July 2008, on his 50th birthday, he held a private reception at the museum during which he expressly requested all invited guests to not bring presents but instead donate money for the establishment of an automotive foundation. This raised the sum of 5,000 €, which was used as the initial capital of the Foundation. Mr. Doht was also able to persuade the then Board of Directors of the Wartburg-Sparkasse bank to function as initial donators. It is thanks to Mr. Peter Bock, the then CEO of the Wartburg-Sparkasse, that the bank not only actively accompanied the establishment of the Foundation but in time also became a reliable partner and the principal donor and benefactor.
To carry out the extensive preparatory legal and administrative work required, it was possible to gain the services of Prof. Dr. Olaf Werner, the director of the Abbe Institut für Stiftungswesen (Abbe Institute for the Foundation System) at the University of Jena. On 4 June 2009, the members of the founding committee accepted the certificate of recognition and the official authorization for the Automobile Welt Eisenach Foundation from Bernhard Rider, Thuringia’s State Secretary of the Interior, in the Thuringian state parliament.